


Consider the Hairpin Turn

by badgerling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Has A Heart, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Dean Winchester Has Self-Worth Issues, Dean Winchester Has a Heart, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Dean Winchester has a Stupid Plan, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s14e11 Damaged Goods, Kissing in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), M/M, Not Beta Read, Present Tense, Talking About Major Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 08:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerling/pseuds/badgerling
Summary: Castiel finding out about Dean's plan to stop Michael, the box, and dropping himself into the ocean goes about as well as Dean expected.





	Consider the Hairpin Turn

Cas is staring at the box like he's trying to figure out where it came from. Who made it. What it was doing in the bunker to begin with. But not like he is trying to figure out what it is. He knows, Dean can tell that just from the slight narrowing of Cas's eyes, from the tension in his shoulders.

"Hey, Cas," Dean says finally, pushing away from the door frame and stepping past the shelves of artifacts and into the room.

"Sam told me your plan." The words are simple. Direct. Dean expects nothing less from Cas. Except this time he had expected more. He'd expected anger, hurt, denial, everything that Sam had given him when he had found out. But Cas...Cas just sounds resigned.

"Yeah, look, there-..." Cas turns to him, and Dean's caught, his voice refusing to cooperate as Cas moves and steps close to him, dangerously invading Dean's personal space, just like the old days. And finally, just like the old days, there's a flash of anger on Cas's face, and Dean braces himself. Because it had been years, almost a decade, since Dean had seen that look in Cas's eyes, that pure anger that's just Cas, since Cas had tossed him against the wall and told Dean just how much of a failure he was.

But Cas doesn't lash out, his hands remain at his side, balled into fists, that line of tension in his shoulders still very, very present.

"It's a stupid plan."

Dean laughs at that, the sound too loud, just bitter enough, and it makes Cas flinch. "It's the only one I got," Dean says, shrugging his shoulders as he finally moves, stepping around Cas and toward the box in the center of the room.

"Bullshit."

"Hey, now, you've been spending too much time around me." Dean's trying to joke it off, to smile his way through the one confrontation he had tried to avoid. While Sam could have talked him out of it, all Cas had to do was look at Dean with that resigned expression, the one that still just confirmed what a fuck-up Dean Winchester really was, and he wouldn't have gone through any of this. He wouldn't have been able to.

"This isn't the only plan. It _can't_ be the only plan." Cas moves to the opposite side of the box, lifting his hands and almost places them on top of the box before he looks down, his eyes scanning over the sigils, and he seemingly reconsiders touching it. He drops his hands back to his sides and takes a deep breath. "I refuse to allow this to be the only plan."

"I don't think you have a say in that, Cas," Dean says, and he doesn't hesitate to rest his hands against the lid of the box. "I can't hold Michael forever, I know that, _you_ know that. Everything ends with Michael winning and the world burning, Cas. Everything except this. This is the only way we survive."

"Not 'we'," Cas corrects quickly, shaking his head as he steps back from the box and crosses his arms. He retreats back from Dean and back from the box, but before he gets too far away, he walks around the box, giving it a wide berth, until he's standing right beside Dean again. "Not _we_. Not _you_. Us, me and Sam. Because you don't survive this." Cas's voice cracks on the last word, and Dean almost reaches up, almost gives in to that deeply buried and forbidden urge to touch, to soothe, to make everything better. He rubs his palms over his thighs instead, anything to get rid of the nervous energy.

"I don't think I can die with an archangel in me." Dean almost shrugs as he says that, but he swallows hard instead. If he thinks too hard about this plan, it threatens to awaken not just Michael deep in his head, but his own fears, his own terror about dying alone, buried with no one to remember him. And shrugging might just set Cas off, that line of tension in the other man hasn't gone away, that coil of potential fury and violence.

"You'll die. Suffocate, maybe. Or drown." Cas's words aren't pointed. He sounds almost distracted, but each way that Dean might die that Cas lists off just makes Dean's jaw tighten, and he's not sure if he's trying to keep from screaming or throwing up. "And Michael will bring you back each time. Over and over and over until he gets _bored_." Cas looks at him again, his eyes searching Dean's face, but Dean looks down and away.

"But he'll be trapped. The world....everyone, _you_ will be safe," Dean says, and when he looks up, Cas is shaking his head, denying everything Dean had just said.

"Boxes don't hold. They never do. You know that, Dean." Cas makes a quiet, frustrated sound deep in his throat, and it almost makes Dean smile. Almost. "And no one will be left to fight him once he finally lets you die. No one will be left to fight him when he finally escapes."

"Yeah, well, it'll have to do. It'll buy you time. Time to figure out how to stop him." Dean takes a deep breath and looks down at the box, slowly tracing one of the sigils with his finger. He opens his mouth, he has more to say, apologies to make, goodbyes to say, feelings, heartbreak, pain, all of it, every word he needs to say. He can feel Cas watching him, expecting _something_ , but Dean finally just shrugs.

Cas is silent at that, but he looks away from Dean, and Dean finally feels like he can relax, calm down, force his heart to stop jumping into his throat every time Cas blinks. But then Cas tilts his head and says, like it's the simplest thing in the world, "I'm coming with you."

"What? No."

"I'm not letting you die alone in a box, Dean." Cas sounds determined, but once again resigned. Like he's determined to see Dean through all of his stupidity, just like always. Dean shakes his head.

"And I'm not letting you die with me. Because of me. The world needs you. Sam, Mom, the other hunters, they're gonna need help when I'm gone." Dean closes his eyes, angling his head away from Cas, away from the chance that someone else might see how easy it would be for Dean to decide that his plan is stupid, that there probably is another way.

"How many times do I have to explain how much the world needs you? How much the world needs _both_ Winchesters?" Cas steps forward, and now he really is too close, he's burning hot, and Dean feels like he could melt against that heat. Cas's hand comes up, and Dean flinches, but it is just to cup the side of Dean's face. It's a gentle hold, completely belying the heat that spreads through Dean from Cas's hand down his body. When he speaks now, his voice is soft, quiet, intimate. "How many times do I have to tell you that you are worth it? Worth saving? Worth falling? Worth rebelling? Worth _everything_?"

"You're gonna make me blush," Dean says, the denial automatic, and if he was in a better head space, he would have shrugged it all off. Made another joke. But he's not, and he's running out of time. Instead, he tries one more line of argument. "Someone needs to close the box. Sam can't. Won't."

"And you think I can." The disgust in Cas's voice makes Dean look up and meet his eyes. "Why do you think _I_ can?" And Dean doesn't have an answer for that, and he shakes his head, pressing his cheek against Cas's palm.

"Cas, I...." But the words still won't come, and his eyes fall shut again as he leans into the warmth of Cas.

"We will find another way, Dean. You, me, Sam, Jack, Mary, we'll even call Jody and Donna, Claire and Alex and Patience." Cas snorts, the sound so soft Dean isn't entirely sure he heard it, "We'll even call Ketch if it comes to that," and Dean can hear the eye roll in those words, so much that it makes him open his eyes to look at Cas who offers only a smile, faint, a ghost of one, but it's there, "We will find a better way."

"And if there isn't one?" Dean knows how tired he sounds, and Cas narrows his eyes, his hand sliding from cupping Dean's head to come down to rest against the curve of his neck, right over Dean's pulse, the heartbeat that is pounding just from that touch.

"Then we both go into the water," Cas says. And again, it's so simple, so ridiculously simple, and Dean exhales, nodding finally as he lets his head fall forward, his forehead pressing against Cas's. Dean stays like that, probably longer than he really should have, longer than he should have if he still wants to claim what he feels for Cas is just friendship and camaraderie.

Dean doesn't move away, though, not even when he says, his voice just as soft as Cas's was, "This is why I didn't come say goodbye. You always do this." Dean lifts his arms, finally wrapping them around Cas only hesitating slightly at the thought of what Sam would think if he walked in. "Sam would have tried logic, you just...." Dean shakes his head, not willing and not able to really put it into words why telling Cas about his plan was so different.

"Take your stupidity and need for dramatics as my own?" Dean lifts his head at that, but he laughs when he sees the lift in Cas's eyebrows.

"Sure. That." Dean moves to rest his forehead back against Cas's, no longer caring about the kind of scene they're making, Dean no longer has time for things like worrying, but before he can press himself back against Cas, Cas's mouth finds his, and Dean finds himself falling into a kiss that burns and sparks and all he can do is hold on, his fingers twisting in Cas's coat as the kiss deepens. When the kiss finally breaks, when Cas pulls away, Dean chases that kiss, pressing forward to reclaim Cas's mouth.

Dean had always heard kissing described like drowning, but with Cas...with Cas, it's all fire, heat, and everything good, and Dean almost lets himself pretend that this is it, this is the perfect ending, nothing else matters, this is enough, right up until the headache starts, suddenly pounding through his head, down his neck, and he screams as he tears his mouth from Cas's to press his face against Cas's shoulder. His hold on Cas's coat is desperate now as the pain and the screaming in his head is practically roaring.

Then Cas slides his hand into Dean's hair, cupping the back of Dean's head, and then there is just warmth, almost oppressive, but comforting, pushing the pain back, quieting the screaming, strengthening the doors in Dean's mind that are keeping the monster at bay.

"Let me help," Cas says. Maybe. Dean can feel the words, but he's not sure he can hear them, his ears are ringing like always from the after-effects of Michael being Michael, but Dean nods just the same, and he lets himself sink into the warmth. By the time he's capable of lifting his head, he and Cas have sunk to the floor, Cas on his knees, Dean practically in his lap, and Sam is standing at the doorway, gun in hand.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean says, before letting his head fall back to Cas's shoulder. Dean knows he should get up, make himself presentable, maybe explain the current situation to his brother, but Sam just looks relieved, a little confused, but not scandalized, so that's better than Dean was expecting. He can feel Cas's grace pulling back (Dean assumes that's what the sudden warmth was, it's the only thing it could be, the warmth so similar to how it feels to be healed by an angel), but Dean reaches up, touching Cas's wrist. He doesn't want the warmth to go anywhere yet, doesn't want Cas to go anywhere yet.

"I'm here, Dean," Cas says, in that same soft tone, the words meant only for Dean. "I will always be here."

"I heard screaming," Sam says after coughing to clear his throat. "Is everything...okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean assures as he turns his head to look at Sam without actually lifting his head from Cas's shoulder. "Everything's fine. It's...." Not good. It won't be good for, well, probably, ever, but it's... "Better." Better's a good word for it. Dean can feel Cas cant his head slightly as his fingers slide out of Dean's hair, his hand coming to rest at the back of Dean's neck.

"Your brother and I have come to an understanding. We have a plan." Dean can almost hear the amusement in Cas's voice, and it mostly just makes Sam look at them both like they've grown two heads each.

"Okay," Sam finally says before gesturing over his shoulder. "Mom got pizza." There's a warning in Sam's tone, a promise that they were all going to have a deeper conversation about this. Whether 'this' is the box, Dean's plan, or Dean in Cas's lap, Dean doesn't know. He nods, though, the movement slight and tired, and Sam leaves, but it still takes Dean and Cas minutes to untangle themselves, stand up, and actually let go of each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I may have been slightly annoyed at this episode. I apologize.


End file.
